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DECEMBER 22, 1820. 

Ktt eomwemotation of 



THE FIRST 



SETTLEMENT OF NEW-ENGLAND. 



BY 

D^JVIEL WEBSTER. 



^ ri iff ; . *' 

100 J ■ . i 



./> BOSTON : 

WEIiliS AND LILLY, COURT-STREET. 

1821. 






DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, TO WIT: 

District Cierfc's Office. 

HE it i-emembei-ed, that on the twentieth day of December, A. D. 1821 , in the forty-sixth year 
of the Independence of the United States of America, Wells & Lilly of the said District, 
have deposited in this Office the title of a Book, the Right whereof they claim as Proprietors, in 
the Words following, to wit .— 

"A Discourse, delivered at Plymouth, December 28, 1820, In commeraoration of the First 
Settlement of New-England. By Daniel Webster." 

In Conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled, " An Act for the 
Encouragement of Learning, by securing the copies of Maps. Charts, and Books, to the Au- 
thors and Proprietors of such Copies, during the limes therein mentioned :'' and also to an Act 
entitled, " An Act supplementarj' to an Act, entitled. An Act for the Emourageraent of 
Learning, by securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of 
such Copies during the times tlierein mentioned : and extending the benefits theieof to the Art! 
of Designing, Engraving, and Etching Historical and other Prints." 

JNO. W. DAVIS, 

Clerk of the District of MassachuKUf. 



I 



/^lOl 



/J/ 



Plymouth, Dec. 23, 1820. 



Hon. Daniel Webster, 

SIR, 

At a meeting of the Trustees of the PiLGRiM Society, present, 
John fVatson, William Davis, James Sever, Alden Bradford, Barnabas 
Hedge, Thomas Jackson, Jr. and Zabdiel Sampson, Esquires, Voted, 
" That the thanks of the Trustees be presented to the Hon. Daniel 
Webster, for his eloquent and interesting Discourse, delivered at 
Plymouth, on the 22d instant, at their request, in commemoration of 
the completion of the second century since the settlement of J^eiu Eng- 
land — that he be requested to furnish a copy for publication — and that 
the Corresponding Secretary communicate the preceding vote." 

While in the performance of this duty, as honorable as it is pleasing, 
I am directed to subjoin, that the Committee of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society, and of the American Antiquarian Society, who attended 
on this occasion, by invitation, unite in the request. 

With great esteem and regard, 
I am. Sir, 

Very Respectfully, 

SAMUEL DAVIS, 

Corresponding Secretary of the Pilgrim Society. 



Boston, Dec. 26, 1820. 

SIR, 

I HAVE received yours of the 23d, communicating the request of th« 
Trustees of the Pilgrim Society, and of the Committee of the Historical 
and Antiquarian Societies, that a copy of my Discourse may be furnish- 
ed for the press. I shall chee«rfuny comply with this request; but at the 
same time I must add, that such is the nature of my other engagements, 
that I hope I may be pardoned if I should be compelled to postpone 
this compliance to a more distant day than I could otherwise have 
wished. 

I am, Sir, with true regard, 

Your most obedient Servant, 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 



To Samtiel Davis, Esq. 
Corresponding Secretary of the Pilgrim Society. 






juET US rejoice that we behold this day. Let us 
be thankful that we have lived to see the bright 
and happy breaking of the auspicious morn, 
which commences the third century of the his- 
tory of New-England. Auspicious indeed ; 
bringing a happiness beyond the common allot- 
ment of Providence to men; full of present joy, 
and gilding with bright beams the prospect of 
futurity, is the dawn that awakens us to the 
commemoration of the Landins; of the Pilgrims. 

Living at an epoch which naturally marks the 
progress of the history of our native land, we 
have come hither to celebrate the great event 

2 



/ 



with which that history commenced. Forever 
honoured be this, the place of our father's re- 
fuge ! Forever remembered the day which saw 
them, v/eary and ^distressed, broken in every 
thing but spirit, poor in all but faith and cou- 
rage, at last secure from the dangers of wintry 
f5eas, and impressing this shore Avith the first 
footsteps of civilized man! 

It is a noble faculty of our nature which ena- 
bles us to connect our thoughts, our sympathies, 
and our happiness, with what is distant, in place 
or time ; and, looking before and after, to hold 
communion at once with our ancestors and our 
posterity. Human and mortal although we are, 
we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, 
without relation to the past or the future. Nei- 
ther the point of time, nor the spot of earth, in 
which we physically live, bounds our rational 
and intellectual enjoyments. We live in the 
past by a knowledge of its history ; and in the 
future by hope and anticipation. By ascend- 
ing to an association with our ancestors ; by con- 
templating their example and studying their 



character ; by partakinj^ their sentiments, and 
imbibing their spirit ; by accompanying them in 
their toils, by sympathising in their sulFerings, 
and rejoicing in their successes and their tri- 
umphs, we mingle our own existence with theirs, 
and seem to belong to their age. We become 
their contemporaries, live the lives which they 
lived, endure what they endured, and partake in 
the rewards which they enjoyed. And in like 
manner, by running along the line of future time, 
by contemplating the probable fortunes of those 
who are coming after us; by attempting some- 
thing which may promote their happiness, and 
leave some not dishonourable memorial of our- 
selves for their regard, when we shall sleep 
with the fathers, we protract our own earthly 
being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as 
well as all that is past, into the narrow compass 
of our earthly existence. As it is not a vain and 
false, but an exalted and religious imagination, 
which leads us to raise our thous^hts from the 
orb, which, amidst this universe of worlds, the 
Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send 
them with something: of the feelino; which na- 



tare prompts, and teaclies to be proper among 
children of the same Eternal Parent, to the con- 
templation of the myriads of fellow beings, with 
which his goodness has peopled the infinite of 
space ; — so neither is it false or vain to consider 
ourselves as interested and connected with our 
whole race, through all time ; allied to our an- 
cestors ; allied to our posterity; closely compact- 
ed on all sides with others; ourselves being but 
links in the great chain of being, which begins 
with the origin of our race, runs onward through 
its successive generations, binding together the 
past, the present, and the future, and terminating 
at last, with the consummation of all things 
earthly, at the throne of God. 

There may be, and there often is, indeed, a re- 
gard for ancestry, which nourishes only a weak 
pride ; as there is also a care for posterity, which 
only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the 
workings of a low and groveling vanity. But 
there is also a moral and philosophical respect 
for our ancestors, which elevates the character 
and improves the heart. Next to the sense 



of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly 
know what should bear with stronger obligation 
on a liberal and enlightened mind, than a con- 
sciousness of alliance with excellence which is 
departed ; and a consciousness, too, that in its 
acts and conduct, and even in its sentiments and 
thoughts, it may be actively operating on the 
happiness of those who come after it. Poetry 
is found to have few stronger conceptions, by 
which it would affect or overwhelm the mind, 
than those in which it presents the moving and 
speaking image of the departed dead to the 
senses of the living. This belongs to poetry, 
only because it is congenial to our nature. Poetry 
is, in this respect, but the hand-maid of true phi- 
losophy and morality ; it deals with us as human 
beings, naturally reverencing those whose visible 
connexion with this state of existence is severed, 
and who may yet exercise we know not what 
sympathy with ourselves ; — and when it carries 
us forward, also, and shows us the long continued 
result of all the good we do, in the prosperity of 
those who follow us, till it bears us from our- 
selves, and absorbs us in an intense interest for 



10 

what shall happen to the generations after us, 
it speaks only in the language of our nature, and 
affects us with sentiments which belong to us as 
human beings. 

Standing in this relation to our ancestors and 
our posterity, we are assembled on this memora- 
ble spot, to perform the duties which that re- 
lation, and the present occasion, impose upon us. 
We have come to this Rock, to record here our 
homage for our Pilgrim Fathers ; our sympathy 
in their sufferings ; our gratitude for their la- 
bours ; our admiration of their virtues ; our ve- 
neration for their piety ; and our attachment to 
those principles of civil and religious liberty, 
which they encountered the dangers of the 
ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of 
savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and 
to establish. — And we would leave here, also, for 
the generations which are rising up rapidly to fill 
our places, some proof, that we have endeavour- 
ed to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired ; 
that in our estimate of public principles, and pri- 
vate virtue ; in our veneration of religion and 



11 

piety; in our devotion to civil and religious lib- 
erty ; in our regard to whatever advances hu- 
man knowledge, or improves human happiness, 
we are not altogether unworthy of our origin. 

There is a local feeling, connected with this 
occasion, too strong to be resisted ; a sort of 
genius of the jjlace, which inspires and awes us. 
We feel that we are on the spot, where the first 
scene of our history was laid ; where the hearths 
and altars of New-England were first placed ; 
where Christianity, and civilization, and letters 
made their first lodgment, in a vast extent of 
country, covered with a wilderness, and peopled 
by roving barbarians. We are here, at the 
season of the year at which the event took place. 
The imagination irresistibly and rapidly draws 
around us the principal features, and the leading 
characters in the original scene. We cast our 
eyes abroad on the ocean, and we see where 
the little barque, with the interesting group upon 
its deck, made its slow progress to the shore. 
We look around us, and behold the hills and pro- 
montories, where the anxious eyes of our fathers 



12 

first saw the places of habitation and of rest. 
We feel the cold which benumbed, and listen to 
the winds which pierced them. Beneath us is 
the Rock, on which New-England received the 
feet of the Pilgrims. We seem even to behold 
them, as they struggle with the elements, and, 
with toilsome efforts gain the shore. We listen 
to the chiefs in council ; we see the unexampled 
exhibition of female fortitude and resignation ; we 
hear the whisperings of youthful impatience, and 
Ave see, what a painter of our own has also 
represented by his pencil, chilled and shivering 
childhood, houseless, but for a mother's arms, 
couchless, but for a mother's breast, till our own 
blood almost freezes. The mild dignity of Carver 
and of Bradford; the decisive and soldier-like 
air and manner of Standish ; the devout Brew- 
ster ; the enterprising Allerton ; the general 
firmness and thoughtfulness of the whole band ; 
their conscious joy for dangers escaped ; their 
deep solicitude about dangers to come; their 
trust in heaven ; their high religious faith, full of 
confidence and anticipation : — all these seem to 
belong to this place, and to be present upon this 
occasion, to fill us with reverence and admiration. 



13 

The settlement of New-England by the coh:)ny 
which landed here on the twenty second of De- 
cember, sixteen hundred and twenty, although 
not the first European establishment in what 
now constitutes the United States, was yet so 
peculiar in its causes and character, and has 
been followed, and must still be followed, by 
such consequences, as to give it a high claim 
to lasting commemoration. On these causes 
and consequences, more than on its immedi- 
ately attendant circumstances, its importance 
as an historical event depends. Great actions 
and striking occurrences, having excited a tem- 
porary admiration, often pass away and are for- 
gotten, because they leave no lasting results, af- 
fecting the prosperity and happiness of commu- 
nities. Such is frequently the fortune of the 
most brilliant military achievements. Of the ten 
thousand battles which have been fought ; of 
all the fields fertilized with carnage ; of the 
banners which have been bathed in blood; of 
the warriors who have hoped that they had risen 
from the field of conquest to a glory as bright 
and as durable as the stars, how few that con- 



14 

tinue long to interest mankind ! The victory of" 
yesterday is reversed by the defeat of to-day ; 
the star of mihtary glory, rising like a meteor, 
like a meteor has fallen ; disgrace and disaster 
hang on the heels of conquest and renown ; vic- 
tor and vanquished presently pass away to oblivion, 
and the world goes on in its course, with the 
loss only of so many lives and so much treasure. 

But if this be frequently, or generally, the for- 
tune of military achievements, it is not always so. 
There are enterprises, military as well as civil, 
which sometimes check the current of events, 
give a new turn to human aflfairs, and transmit 
their consequences through ages. We see their 
importance in their results, and call them great, 
because great things follow. There have been 
battles which have fixed the fate of nations. 
These come down to us in history with a solid 
and permanent interest, not created by a display 
of glittering armour, the rush of adverse bat- 
talions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the 
flight, the pursuit, and the victory; but by their 
effect in advancing or retarding human knowledge, 
in overthrowing or establishing despotism, in ex- 



15 

tending or destroying human happiness. Wiien 
the traveller pauses on the plain of Marathon, 
what are the emotions which most strongly agi- 
tate his breast? What is that glorious recollec- 
tion, which thrills through his frame, and suffuses 
his eyes ? — Not, I imagine, that Grecian skill and 
Grecian valour were here most signally dis- 
played ; but that Greece herself was here saved. 
It is, because to this spot, and to the event which, 
has rendered it immortal, he refers all the suc- 
ceeding glories of the republic. It is because 
if that day had gone otherwise, Greece had per- 
ished. It is because he perceives that her phi- 
losophers, and orators, her poets and painters, her 
sculptors and architects, her governments and 
free institutions, point backward to Marathon, 
and that their future existence seems to have 
been suspended on the contingency, whether the 
Persian or the Grecian banner should wave victo- 
rious in the beams of that day's setting sun. And 
as his imagination kindles at the retrospect, he 
is transported back to the interesting moment, he 
counts the fearful odds of the contending hosts, 
his interest for the result overwhelms him ; he 



16 

trembles, as if it were still uncertain, and seems 
to doubt, whether he may consider Socrates and 
Plato, Demosthenes, Sophocles and Phidias, as 
secure, yet, to himself and to the world. 

"If we conquer," said the Athenian commander 
on the morning of that decisive day, — " If we 
conquer, we shall make Athens the greatest city 
of Greece." A prophecy, how well fulfilled ! — 
" If God prosper us," might have been the more 
appropriate language of our Fathers, when they 
landed upon this Rock ; — " if God prosper us, 
we shall here begin a work which shall last for 
ages ; we shall plant here a new society, in the 
principles of the fullest liberty, and the purest 
religion : we shall subdue this wilderness which 
is before us ; we shall fill this region of the great 
continent, which stretches almost from pole to 
pole, with civilization and Christianity ; the 
temples of the true God shall rise, where now 
ascends the smoke of idolatrous sacrifice ; fields 
and gardens, the flow^ers of summer, and the wav- 
ing and golden harvests of autumn, shall extend 
over a thousand hills, and stretch along a thousand 



17 

vallies, never yet, since the creation, reclaimed 
to the use of clvlHzed man. We shall whiten this 
coast with the canvass of a prosperous commerce ; 
we shall stud the long and winding shore with an 
hundred cities. That which we sow in weakness 
shall be raised in strength. From our sincere 
but houseless worship, there shall spring splendid 
temples to record God's goodness ; from the sim- 
plicity of our social union, there shall arise wise 
and politic constitutions of government, full of the 
liberty which we ourselves bring and breathe ; 
from our zeal for learning, Institutions shall spring, 
which shall scatter the light of knowledge 
throughout the land, and, in time, paying back 
where they have borrowed, shall contribute 
their part to the great aggregate of human 
knowledge ; and our descendants, through all 
generations, shall look back to this spot, and to 
this hour, with unabated affection and regard." 

A brief remembrance of the causes which led 
to the settlement of this place ; some account of 
the peculiarities and characteristic qualities of 
that settlement, as distinguished from other in- 



stances of colonization ; a short notice of the pro- 
gress of New-England in the great interests of 
Society, during the century Avhich is now elaps- 
ed; with a few observations on the principles 
upon which society and government are estab- 
lished in this country ; — comprise all that can 
be attempted, and much more than can be sa- 
tisfactorily performed on the present occasion. 

Of the motives which influenced the first set- 
tlers to a voluntary exile, induced them to relin- 
quish their native country, and to seek an asy- 
lum in this then unexplored wilderness, the first 
and principal, no doubt, were connected with 
Religion. They sought to enjoy a higher de- 
gree of Religious freedom, and what they es- 
teemed a purer form of Religious Avorship, than 
was allowed to their choice, or presented to their 
imitation, in the old world. The love of Reli- 
gious Liberty is a stronger sentiment, when fully 
excited, than an attachment to civil or political 
freedom. That freedom which the conscience 
demands, and which men feel bound by their 
hopes of salvation to contend for, can hardly 



19 

fail to be attained. Conscience, in the cause of 
Religion, and the worship of the Deity, pre- 
pares the mind to act, and to suffer beyond 
almost all other causes. It sometimes gives an 
impulse so irresistible, that no fetters of power 
or of opinion can withstand it. History instructs 
us that this love of Religious liberty, a com- 
pound sentiment in the breast of man, made up 
of the clearest sense of right, and the highest 
conviction of duty, is able to look the sternest 
despotism in the face, and with means apparent- 
ly most inadequate, to shake principalities and 
powers. There is a boldness, a spirit of daring, 
in Religious reformers, not to be measured by 
the general rules which control men's purposes 
and actions. If the hand of power be laid upon 
it, this only seems to augment its force and 
its elasticity, and to cause its action to be 
more formidable and terrible. Human invention 
has devised nothing, human power has compassed 
nothing that can forcibly restrain it, when it 
breaks forth. Nothing can stop it, but to give 
way to it ; nothing can check it, but indul- 
gence. It loses its power only when it has 



20 

gained its object. The principle of toleration, 
to which the world has come so slowlj, is at 
once the most just and the most wise of all 
principles. Even when religious feeling takes a 
character of extravagance and enthusiasm, and 
seems to threaten the order of society, and shake 
the columns of the social edifice, its principal 
danger is in its restraint. If it be allowed indul- 
gence and expansion like the elemental fires it 
only agitates and perhaps purifies the atmos- 
phere, while its efforts to throw off restraint 
would burst the world asunder. 

It is certain, that although many of them were 
Republicans in principle, we have no evidence 
that our New-England ancestors would have emi- 
grated, as they did, from their own native coun- 
try, become wanderers in Europe, and finally un- 
dertaken the establishment of a colony here, 
merely from their dislike of the political systems 
of Europe. They fled not so much from the 
civil government, as from the Hierarchy, and the 
laws which enforced conformity to the Church 
Establishment. Mr. Robinson had left England 
as early as sixteen hundred and eight, on account 



21 

of the prosecutions for non-conformity, and had 
retired to Holland. He left England, from no 
disappointed ambition in affairs of state, from no 
regrets at the want of preferment in the Church, 
nor from any motive of distinction, or of gain. 
Uniformity in matters of Religion was pressed 
with such extreme rigour, that a voluntary exile 
seemed the most eligible mode of escaping from 
the penalties of non-compliance. The accession 
of Elizabeth had, it is true, quenched the fires 
of Smithfield, and put an end to the easy ac- 
quisition of the crown of martyrdom. Her long 
reign had established the Reformation, but tole- 
ration was a virtue beyond her conception, and 
beyond the age. She left no example of it to 
her successor ; and he was not of a character 
which rendered it probable that a sentiment 
either so wise or so liberal should originate with 
him. At the present period it seems incredible, 
that the learned, accomplished, unassuming, and 
inoffensive Robinson should neither be tolerated 
in his own peaceable mode of Avorship, in his 
own country, nor suffered quietly to depart from 
it. Yet such was the fact. He left his country 

4 



22 

by stealth, that he might elsewhere enjoy those 
rights which ought to belong to men in all coun- 
tries. The embarkation of the Pilo-rims for 
Holland is deeply interesting, from its circum- 
stances, and also as it marks the character of 
the times ; independently of its connexion with 
names now incorporated with the history of 
Empire. The embarcation was intended to be 
in the night, that it might escape the notice 
of the officers of government. Great pains had 
been taken to secure boats, which should come 
undiscovered to the shore, and receive the fugi- 
tives ; and frequent disappointments had been 
experienced in this respect. At length the 
appointed time came, bringing with it unusual 
severity of cold and rain. An unfrequented and 
barren heath, on the shores of Lincolnshire, 
w^as the selected spot, where the feet of the Pil- 
grims were to tread, for the last time, the land 
of their fathers. 

The vessel which was to receive them, did not 
come until the next day, and in the mean time 
the little band was collected, and men and women 
and children and baggage were crowded together. 



23 

in melancholy and distressed confusion. The sea 
was rough, and the women and children already 
sick, from their passage down the river to the place 
of embarcation. At lengfth the wished for boat 
silently and fearfully approaches the shore, and 
men and women and children, shaking with fear 
and Avith cold, as many as the small vessel could 
bear, venture off on a dangerous sea. Imme- 
diately the advance of horses is heard from be- 
hind, armed men appear, and those not yet em- 
barked are seized, and taken into custody. In 
the hurry of the moment, there had been no re- 
gard to the keeping together of families, in the 
first embarcation, and on account of the appear- 
ance of the horsemen, the boat never returned 
for the residue. Those who had got away, and 
those who had not, were in equal distress. A 
storm, of great violence, and long duration, arose 
at sea, which not only protracted the voyage, ren- 
dered distressing by the want of all those ac- 
commodations which the interruption of the em- 
barcation had occasioned, but also forced the 
vessel out of her course, and menaced immediate 
shipwreck ; while those on shore, when they 



24 

were dismissed from the custody of the officers 
of justice, having no longer homes or houses to 
retire to, and their friends and protectors being 
already gone, became objects of necessary charity, 
as well as of deep commiseration. 

As this scene passes before us, we can hardly 
forbear asking, whether this be a band of male- 
factors and felons flying from justice ? What are 
their crimes, that they hide themselves in dark- 
ness ? — To what punishment are they exposed, 
that to avoid it, men, and women, and children, 
thus encounter the surf of the North Sea, and the 
terrors of a night storm? What induces this 
armed pursuit, and this arrest of fugitives, of all 
ages and both sexes ? — Truth does not allow us 
to answer these inquiries, in a manner that does 
credit to the wisdom or the justice of the times. 
This was not the flight of guilt, but of virtue. 
It was an humble and peaceable religion, flying 
from causeless oppression. It was conscience, 
attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule of 
the Stuarts. It was Robinson, and Brewster, 
leading off their little band from their native soil, 



2d 

at first to find shelter on the shores of the neigh- 
bouring continent, but ultimately to come hither ; 
and having surmounted all difficulties, and braved 
a thousand dangers, to find here a place of re- 
fuge and of rest. Thanks be to God, that this 
spot was honoured as the asylum of religious lib- 
erty. May its standard, reared here, remain for- 
ever ! — May it rise up as high as heaven, till its 
banner shall fan the air of both continents, and 
wave as a glorious ensign of peace and security 
to the nations ! 

The peculiar character, condition, and circum- 
stances of the colonies which introduced civiliza- 
tion and an English race into New-England, af- 
ford a most interesting and extensive topic of 
discussion. On these much of our subsequent 
character and fortune has depended. Their in- 
fluence has essentially affected our whole history, 
through the two centuries which have elapsed; 
and as they have become intimately connected 
with government, laws, and property, as well as 
with our opinions on the subjects of religion and 
civil liberty, that influence is likely to continue 



26 

to be felt through the centuries which shall suc- 
ceed. Emigration from one region to another, 
and the emission of colonies to people countries 
more or less distant from the residence of the 
parent stock, are common incidents in the history 
of mankind ; but it has not often, perhaps never 
happened, that the establishment of colonies 
should be attempted, under circumstances, how- 
ever beset with present difficulties and dan- 
gers, yet so favourable to ultimate success, and 
so conducive to magnificent results, as those 
which attended the first settlements on this 
part of the continent. In other instances, emi- 
gration has proceeded from a less exalted pur- 
pose, in a period of less general intelligence, or 
more without plan and by accident ; or under cir- 
cumstances, physical and moral, less favourable 
to the expectation of laying a foundation for great 
public prosperity and future empire. 

A great resemblance exists, obviously, between 
all the English colonies, established within the 
present limits of the United States ; but the oc- 
casion attracts our attention more immediately to 



27 

those which took possession of New-England, and 
the pecuHarities of these furnish a strong contrast 
with most other instances of colonization. 

Among the ancient nations, the Greeks, no 
doubt, sent forth from their territories the great- 
est number of colonies. So numerous indeed 
were they, and so great the extent of space over 
which they were spread, that the parent country 
fondly and naturally persuaded herself, that by 
means of them she had laid a sure foundation for 
the universal civilization of the world. These 
establishments, from obvious causes, were most 
numerous in places most contiguous ; yet they 
were found on the coasts of France, on the 
shores of the Euxine sea, in Africa, and even, as is 

alleged, on the borders of India. These emi- 
grations appear to have been sometimes vo- 
luntary and sometimes compulsory ; arising from 
the spontaneous enterprise of individuals, or 
the order and regulation of government. It 
was a common opinion with ancient writers, that 
they were undertaken in religious obedience 
to the commands of oracles; and it is proba- 



28 

ble that impressions of this sort might have 
had more or less influence; but it is probable, 
also, that on these occasions the oracles did not 
speak a language dissonant from the views and 
purposes of the state. 

Political science among the Greeks seems never 
to have extended to the comprehension of a sys- 
tem, which should be adequate to the government 
of a great nation upon principles of liberty. 
They were accustomed only to the contemplation 
of small republics, and were led to consider an 
augmented population as incompatible with free 
institutions. The desire of a remedy for this sup- 
posed evil, and the wish to establish marts for 
trade, led the governments often to undertake 
the establishment of colonies as an affair of state 
expediency. Colonization and commerce, indeed, 
would naturally become objects of interest to an 
ingenious and enterprising people, inhabiting a 
territory closely circumscribed in its limits, and in 
no small part mountainous and sterile ; while the 
islands of the adjacent seas, and the promontories 
and coasts of the neighbouring continents, by their 



29 

mere proximity, strongly solicited the excited 
spirit of emigration. Such Avas this proximity, 
in many instances, that the new settlements ap- 
peared rather to be the mere extension of popu- 
lation over contiguous territory, than the estab- 
lishment of distant colonies. In proportion as 
they were near to the parent state, they would 
be under its authority, and partake of its for- 
tunes. The colony at Marseilles might perceive 
lightly, or not at all, the sway of Phccis ; while 
the islands in the Egean sea could hardly attam 
to independence of their Athenian origin. Many 
of these establishments took place at an early 
age; and if there were defects in the governments 
of the parent states, the colonists did not pos- 
sess philosophy or experience sufficient to correct 
such evils in their own institutions, even if they 
had not been, by other causes, deprived of the 
power. An immediate necessity, connected with 
the support of life, was the main and direct in- 
ducement to these undertakings, and there could 
hardly exist more than the hope of a successful 
imitation of institutions with which they were 
already acquainted, and of holding an equality 

5 



30 

with their neighbours, in the course of improve- 
ment. The laws and customs, both poHtical and 
municipal, as well as the religious worship of the 
parent city, were transferred to the colony ; and 
the parent city herself, with all such of her colo- 
nies as were not too far remote for frequent in- 
tercourse, and common sentiments, would appear 
like a family of cities, more or less dependent, 
and more or less connected. We know how im- 
perfect this system was, as a system of general 
politics, and what scope it gave to those mutual 
dissentions and conflicts which proved so fatal to 
Greece. 

But it is more pertinent to our present pur- 
pose to observe, that nothing existed in the char- 
acter of Grecian emigrations, or in the «pirit and 
intelligence of the emigrants, likely to give a new 
and important direction to human affairs, or a 
new impulse to the human mind. Their mo- 
tives were not high enough, their views were 
not sufficiently large and prospective. They 
went not forth, like our ancestors, to erect sys- 
tems of more perfect civil liberty, or to enjoy a 
higher degree of religious freedom. x\bove all, 



31 

there was nothing in the rcho-ion and learnini]^ of 
the age, that could either inspire high purposes, 
or give the abihty to execute them. Whatever 
restraints on civil hbertj, or whatever abuses in 
reUgious worship, existed at the time of our fa- 
thers' emigration, yet, even then, all was light 
in the moral and mental world, in comparison with 
its condition in most periods of the ancient states. 
The settlement of a new continent, in an age of 
progressive knowledge and improvement, could 
not but do more than merely enlarge the natu- 
ral boundaries of the habitable world. It could 
not but do much more even than extend com- 
merce and increase wealth among the human 
race. We see how this event has acted, how it 
must have acted, and wonder only why it did not 
act sooner, in the production of moral effects, on 
the state of human knowledge, the general tone 
of human sentiments, and the prospects of 
human happiness. It gave to civilized man not 
only a new continent to be inhabited and cultivat- 
ed, and new seas to be explored ; but it gave him 
also a new range for his thoughts, new objects 
for curiosity, and new excitements to knowledge 
and improvement. 



32 

Roman colonization resembled, far less than 
that of the Greeks, the original settlements of this 
country. Power and dominion were the objects 
of Rome, even in her colonial establishments. 
Her whole exterior aspect was for centuries hos- 
tile and terrific. She grasped at dominion, from 
India to Britain, and her measures of coloniza- 
tion partook of the character of her general 
syetem. Her policy was military, because her 
objects were power, ascendancy, and subjugation. 
Detachments of emigrants from Rome incorporat- 
ed themselves with, and governed, the original in- 
habitants of conquered countries. She sent citi- 
zens where she had first sent soldiers ; her law 
followed her sword. Her colonies were a sort of 
military establishment ; so many advanced posts 
in the career of her dominion. A governor from 
Rome ruled the new colony with absolute sway, 
and often Avith unbounded rapacity. In Sicily, 
in Gaul, in Spain, and in Asia, the power of Rome 
prevailed, not nominally only, but really and ef- 
fectually. Those who immediately exercised it 
were Roman ; the tone and tendency of its admin- 
istration, Roman. Rome herself contmued to be 



33 

the heart and centre of the great system which 
she had established. Extortion and rapacity, find- 
ing a wide and often rich field of action in the 
provinces, looked nevertheless to the banks of 
the Tiber, as the scene in which their ill-gotten 
treasures should be displayed ; or if a spirit of 
more honest acquisition prevailed, the object, 
nevertheless, was ultimate enjoyment in Rome 
itself. If our own history, and our own times | 
did not sufficiently expose the inherent and incur- \ 

able evils of provincial government, we might see \ 

I 
them portrayed, to our amazement, in the deso- i 

lated and ruined provinces of the Roman empire. I 

We might hear them, in a voice that terrifies us, | 

in those strains of complaint and accusation, which \ 

the advocates of the provinces poured forth in \ 

the Roman Forum. — " Quas res luxuries in fiagi- | 

tiis, crudelitas in suppliciis, avaritia in rapinis, I 

superbia in contumeliis, efflcere potuisset, eas omneis 

sese pertulisse.''^ 

As was to be expected, the Roman Provinces 
partook of the fortunes as well as of the senti- 
ments and general character of the seat of em- 



34 

pire. They lived together with her, they flourish- 
ed with her, and fell with her. The branches 
were lopped away even before the vast and vene- 
rable trunk itself fell prostrate to the earth. Noth- 
ing had proceeded from her, which could support 
itself, and bear up the name of its origin, when her 
own sustaining arm should be enfeebled or with- 
drawn. It was not given to Rome to see, either 
at her zenith, or in her decline, a child of her 
own, distant indeed, and independent of her con- 
trol, yet speaking her language and inheriting 
her blood, springing forward to a competition with 
her own power, and a comparison with her own 
great renown. She saw not a vast region of the 
earth, peopled from her stock, full of states and 
political communities, improving upon the models 
of her institutions, and breathing in fuller measure 
the spirit which she had breathed in the best 
periods of her existence ; enjoying and extending 
her arts and her literature ; rising rapidly from 
political childhood to manly strength and inde- 
pendence ; her offspring, yet now her equal ; 
unconnected with the causes ^which might affect 
the duration of her own power and greatness ; of 



35 

common origin, but not linked to a common fate ; 
giving ample pledge, that her name should not 
be forgotten, that her language should not cease 
to be used among men ; that whatsoever she had 
done for human knowledge and human happi- 
ness, should be treasured up and preserved ; that 
the record of her existence, and her achievements, 
should not be obscured although, in the inscruta- 
ble purposes of Providence, it might be her desti- 
ny to fall from opulence and splendour ; although 
the time might come, when darkness should 
settle on all her hills; when foreign or domes- 
tic violence should overturn her altars and her 
temples; when ignorance and despotism should 
fill the places where Laws, and Arts, and Lib- 
erty had flourished ; when the feet of barbarism 
should trample on the tombs of her consuls, 
and the walls of her senate house and forum 
echo only to the voice of savage triumph. She 
saw not this glorious vision, to inspire and fortify 
her against the possible decay or downfal of her 
power. Happy are they, who in our day may 
behold it, if they shall contemplate it with the 
sentiments which it ought to inspire ! 



36 

The New-England colonies differ quite as wide- 
ly from the Asiatic establishments of the modern 
European Nations, as from the models of the 
Ancient Stales. The sole object of those estab- 
lishments Avas originally trade ; although Ave 
have seen, in one of them, the anomaly of a 
mere trading company attaining a political char- 
acter, disbursing revenues, and maintaining ar- 
mies and fortresses, until it has extended its 
control over seventy millions of people. Dif- 
fering from these, and still differing more from 
the New-England and North American Colonies, 
are the European settlements in the West India 
Islands. It is not strange, that when men's minds 
were turned to the settlement of America, dif- 
ferent objects should be proposed by those who 
emigrated to the different regions of so vast a 
country. Climate, soil, and condition were not 
all equally favourable to all pursuits. In the 
West Indies, the purpose of those who went 
thither, was to engage in that species of agricul- 
ture, suited to the soil and climate, which seems 
to bear more resemblance to commerce, than to 
the hard and plain tillage of New England. The 



37 

great staples of these countries, being partly an 
agricultural and partly a manufactured product, 
and not being of the necessaries of life, become 
the object of calculation, with respect to a profi- 
table investment of capital, like any other enter- 
prise of trade or manufacture. The more espe- 
cially, as they require, by necessity or habit, 
slave labour for their production, the capital 
necessary to carry on the work of this produc- 
tion is more considerable. The West Indies 
are resorted to, therefore, rather for the invest- 
ment of capital, than for the purpose of sustain- 
ing life by personal labour. Such as possess a 
considerable amount of capital, or sucli as choose 
to adventure in commercial speculations with- 
out capital, can alone be fitted to be emigrants to 
the islands. The agriculture of these regions, 
as before observed, is a sort of commerce ; and 
it is a species of employment, in which labour 
seems to form an inconsiderable ingredient in the 
productive causes ; since the portion of white 
labour is exceedingly small, and slave labour is 
rather more like profit on stock, or capital, than 
labour properly so called. The individual who 

6 



38 

contemplates an establishment of this kind, takes 
into the account the cost of the necessary num- 
ber of slaves, in the same manner as he calcu- 
lates the cost of the land. The uncertainty, too, 
of this species of employment, affords another 
ground of resemblance to commerce. Although 
gainful, on the whole, and in a series of years, it 
is often very disastrous for a single year, and 
as the capital is not readily invested in other 
pursuits, bad crops, or bad markets, not only 
affect the profits, but the capital itself. Hence 
the sudden depressions v^^hich take place in the 
value of such estates. 

But the great and leading observation, relative 
to these establishments, remains to be made. It 
is, that the owners of the soil and of the capital 
seldom consider themselves at home in the colony. 
A very great portion of the soil itself is usually 
owned in the mother country ; a still greater is 
mortgaged for capital obtained there ; and, in gene- 
ral, those who are to derive an interest from the 
products, look to the parent country as the place 
for enjoyment of their wealth. The population 



3» 

is therefore constantly fluctuating. Nobody comes 
but to return. A constant succession of owners, 
agents, and factors takes place. Whatsoever the 
soil, forced by the unmitigated toil of slavery, can 
yield, is borne lioine to defray rents, and interest, 
and agencies ; or to give the means of living in a 
better society. In such a state, it is evident that 
no spirit of permanent improvement is likely to 
spring up. Profits will not be invested with a 
distant view of benefiting posterity. Roads and 
canals will hardly be built ; schools will not be 
founded ; colleges will not be endowed. There 
will be few fixtures in society; no principles of 
utility or of elegance, planted now, with the hope 
of being developed and expanded hereafter. Pro- 
fit, immediate profit, must be the principal active 
spring in the social system. There may be many 
particular exceptions to these general remarks, but 
the outline of the whole, is such as is here drawn. 

Another most important consequence of such 
a state of things is, that no idea of indepen- 
dence of the parent country is likely to arise ; 
unless indeed it should spring up in a form, that 
would threaten universal desolation. The inhabi- 



40 

tants have no strong attachment to the place 
which they inhabit. The hope of a great portion 
of them, is to leave it ; and their great desire, 
to leave it soon. However useful they may be 
to the parent state, how much soever they may 
add to the conveniences and luxuries of life, 
these colonies are not favoured spots, for the 
expansion of the human mind, for the progress of 
permanent improvement, or for sowing the seeds 
of future independent empire. 

Different, indeed, most widely different, from 
all these instances of emigration and plantation, 
were the condition, the purposes, and the pros- 
pects of our Fathers, when they established their 
infant colony upon this spot. They came hither 
to a land from which they were never to re- 
turn. Hither they had brought, and here they 
were to fix, their hopes, their attachments, and 
their objects. Some natural tears they shed, as 
they left the pleasant abodes of their fathers, and 
some emotions they suppressed, when the white 
cliffs of tlieir native country, now seen for the 
last time, grew dim to their sight. They were 
acting however upon a resolution not to be chang- 



41 

ed. With whatever stifled regrets, with whatever 
occasional hesitation, with whatever appalHng ap- 
prehensions, which might sometimes arise with 
force to shake the firmest purpose, they had yet 
committed themselves to heaven, and the ele- 
ments ; and a thousand leagues of water soon in- 
terposed to separate them forever from the re- 
gion which gave them birth. A new existence 
awaited them here ; and when they saw these 
shores, rough, cold, barbarous, and barren as then 
they were, they beheld their country. That mixed 
and strong feeling, which we call love of country, 
and which is, in general, never extinguished in the 
heart of man, grasped and embraced its proper 
object here. Whatever constitutes country, ex- 
cept the earth and the sun, all the moral causes of 
affection and attachment, which operate upon the 
heart, they had brought with them to their new 
abode. Here were now their families and 
friends ; their homes, and their property. Be- 
fore they reached the shore, they had estab- 
lished the elements of a social system, and at a 
much earlier period had settled their forms of 
religious worship. At the moment of their land- 



42 

ii)g', therefore, they possessed institutions of go- 
vernment, and institutions of rehgion : and friends 
and families, and social and religious institutions, 
established by consent, founded on choice and 
preference, how nearly do these fill up our whole 
idea of country ! — The morning that beamed on 
the first night of their repose, saw the Pilgrims 
already established in their country. There were 
political institutions, and civil liberty, and religious 
worship. Poetry has fancied nothing, in the wander- 
ings of heroes, so distinct and characteristic. Here 
was man, indeed, unprotected, and unprovided for, 
on the shore of a rude and fearful Avilderness ; 
but it was politic, intelligent and educated man. 
Every thing was civilized but the physical world. 
Institutions containing in substance all that ages 
had done for human government, were established 
in a forest. Cultivated mind was to act on unculti- 
vated nature ; and, more than all, a government, 
and a country, were to commence, with the very 
first foundations laid under the divine light of the 
christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy 
futurity ! Who would wish, that his country's 
existence had otherwise begun? — Who would de- 



43 

tire the power of going back to the ages of fable ? 
Who would wish for an origin, obscured in the 
darkness of antiquity ? — Who would wish for 
other emblazoning of his country's heraldry, 
or other ornaments of her genealogy, than to be 
able to say, that her first existence was with intel- 
ligence ; her first breath the inspirations of lib- 
erty; her first principle the truth of divine re- 
ligion 9 

Local attachments and sympathies would ere 
long spring up in the breasts of our ancestors, 
endearing to them the place of their refuge. 
Whatever natural objects are associated with in- 
teresting scenes and high efforts, obtain a hold 
on human feeling, and demand from the heart a 
sort of recognition and regard. This Rock soon 
became hallowed in the esteem of the Pilgrims, 
and these hills grateful to their sight. Neither 
they nor their children were again to till the soil 
of England, nor again to traverse the seas which 
surrounded her. But here was a new sea, now 
open to their enterprise, and a new soil, which 
had not failed to respond gratefully to their labo- 



44 

rious industry, and which was already assuming a 
a robe of verdure. Hardly had they provided 
shelter for the living, ere they were summoned 
to erect sepulchres for the dead. The ground 
had become sacred, by enclosing the remains of 
some of their companions and connexions. A 
parent, a child, a husband or a wife, had gone the 
way of all flesh, and mingled with the dust of 
New-England. We naturally look with strong 
emotions to the spot, though it be a wilderness, 
where the ashes of those we have loved repose. 
Where the heart has laid down what it loved 
most, it is desirous of laying itself down. No 
sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no 
honourable inscription, no ever burning taper that 
would drive away the darkness of death, can 
soften our sense of the reality of mortality, and 
hallow to our feelings the ground which is to 
cover us, like the consciousness that we shall 
sleep, dust to dust, with the objects of our aifec- 
tions. 

In a short time other causes sprung up to bind 
the Pilgrims with new cords to their chosen land. 



45 

Children were born, and the hopes of future gen- 
erations arose, in the spot of their new habitation. 
The second greneration found this the land of their 
nativity, and saw that thej were bound to its for- 
tunes. They beheld their father's graves around 
them, and while they read the memorials of their 
toils and labours, they rejoiced in the inheritance 
which they found bequeathed to them. 

Under the influence of these causes, it was 
to be expected, that an interest and a feel- 
ing should arise here, entirely different from the 
interest and feeling of mere Englishmen ; and 
all the subsequent history of the colonies proves 
this to have actually and gradually taken place. 
With a general acknowledgment of the su- 
premacy of the British crown, there was, from 
the first, a repugnance to an entire submis- 
sion to the control of British legislation. The 
colonies stood upon their charters, which as 
they contended, exempted them from the ordi- 
nary power of the British parliament, and au- 
thorised them to conduct their own concerns by 
their own councils. They utterly resisted the 

7 



notion that they were to be ruled by the mere 
authority of the government at home, and would 
not endure even that their own charter govern- 
ments should be established on the other side of 
the Atlantic. It was not a controling or protect- 
ing board in England, but a government of their 
own, and existing immediately within their limits, 
which could satisfy their wishes. It was easy 
to foresee, what we know also to have happened, 
that the first great cause of collision and jealousy 
would be, under the notion of political economy 
then and still prevalent in Europe, an attempt on 
the part of the mother country to monopolize the 
trade of the colonies. Whoever has looked 
deeply into the causes which produced our revo- 
lution, has found, if I mistake not, the original 
principle far back in this claim, on the part of 
England, to monopolize our trade, and a continu- 
ed effort on the part of the colonies to resist or 
evade that monopoly; if indeed it be not still 
more just and philosophical to go farther back, 
and to consider it decided, that an independent 
government must arise here, the moment it was 
ascertained that an English colony, such as land- 



47 

ed in this place, could sustain itself against the 
dangers Avhich surrounded it, and, with other si- 
milar establishments, overspread the land with an 
English population. Accidental causes retarded 
at times, and at times accelerated the progress of 
the controversy. The colonies wanted strength, 
and time gave it to them. They required meas- 
ures of strong and palpable injustice on the part of 
the mother country, to justify resistance ; the early 
part of the late King's reign furnished them. 
They needed spirits of high order, of great daring, 
of long foresight and of commanding power, to 
seize the favouring occasion to strike a blow, which 
should sever, forever, the tie of colonial depen- 
dence; and these spirits were found, in all the 
extent which that or any crisis could demand, in 
Otis, Adams, Hancock, and the other immediate 
authors of our independence. Still it is true, 
that for a century, causes had been in operation 
tending to prepare things for this great result. 
In the year 1660 the English act of Navigation was 
passed ; the first and grand object of which seems 
to have been to secure to England the whole trade 
with her plantations. It was provided, by that 



act, that none but English ships should transport 
American produce over the ocean ; and that the 
principal articles of that produce should be al- 
lowed to be sold only in the markets of the mo- 
ther country. Three years afterwards another 
law was passed, which enacted, that such com- 
modities as the colonies might wish to purchase, 
should be bought only in the markets of the mo- 
ther country. Severe rules were prescribed to 
enforce the provisions of these laws, and heavy 
penalties imposed on all who should violate them. 
In the subsequent years of the same reign, other 
statutes were passed, to reinforce these statutes, 
and other rules prescribed, to secure a compli- 
ance with these rules. In this manner was the 
trade, to and from the colonies, tied up, al- 
most to the exclusive advantage of the parent 
country. But laws, which rendered the interest 
of a whole people subordinate to that of another 
people, were not likely to execute themselves ; 
nor was it easy to find many on the spot, who 
could be depended upon for carrying them into 
execution. In fact, these laws were more or less 
evaded, or resisted, in all the colonies. To en- 



49 

force tliem was the constant endeavour of the 
government at home ; to prevent or elude then- 
operation, the perpetual object here. " The laws 
of navigation," says a living British writer, " were 
no where so openly disobeyed and contemned, as 
in New-England." " The People of Massachu- 
setts Bay," he adds, " were from the first dispos- 
ed to act as if independent of the mother coun- 
try, and having a Governor and magistrates of 
their own choice, it was difficult to enforce any 
regulation which came from the English parlia- 
ment, adverse to their interests." To provide 
more effectually for the execution of these laws, 
we know that courts of admiralty were after- 
wards established by the crown, with power to 
try revenue causes, as questions of admiralty, 
upon the construction, given by the crown law- 
yers, to an act of parliament ; — a great depar- 
ture from the ordinary principles of English 
jurisprudence, but which has been maintained, 
nevertheless, by the force of habit and precedent, 
and is adopted in our own existing systems of go- 
vernment. 



50 

" There lie," says another English writer, whose 
connexion with the Board of Trade has enabled 
him to ascertain many facts connected with colonial 
history, — " There lie among the documents in 
the board of trade and paper office, the most 
satisfactory proofs, from the epoch of the Eng- 
lish revolution in 1688, throughout every reign, 
and during every administration, of the settled 
purpose of the colonies to acquire direct inde- 
pendence and positive sovereignty." Perhaps 
this may he stated somewhat too strongly ; but 
it cannot be denied, that from the very nature 
of the establishments here, and from the general 
character of the measures respecting their con- 
cerns, early adopted, and steadily pursued by the 
English government, a division of the empire 
was the natural and necessary result to which 
every thing tended. 

I have dwelt on this topic, because it seems 
to me, that the peculiar original character of 
the New-England colonies, and certain causes 
coeval with their existence, have had a strong 
and decided influence on all their subsequent 



51 

history, and especially on the great event of the 
Revolution. Whoever would write our history, 
and would understand and explain early transac- 
tions, should comprehend the nature and force 
of the feeling which I have endeavoured to des- 
cribe. As a son, leaving the house of his father 
for his own, finds, by the order of nature, and 
the very law of his being, nearer and dearer 
objects around which his affections circle, while 
his attachment to the parental roof becomes 
moderated, by degrees, to a composed regard, 
and an affectionate remembrance ; so our ances- 
tors, leaving their native land, not without some 
violence to the feelings of nature and affection, 
yet in time found here, a new circle of engage- 
ments, interests, and affections ; a feeling, which 
more and more encroached upon the old, till an 
undivided sentiment, that this vms their country, 
occupied the heart ; and patriotism, shutting out 
from its embraces the parent realm, became 
local to America. 

Some retrospect of the century which has 
now elapsed, is among the duties of the occa- 



52 

slon. It must, however, necessarily be imper- 
fect, to be compressed within the Hmits of a 
single discourse. I shall content myself, therefore, 
with taking notice of a few of the leading, and 
most important, occurrences, which have distin- 
guished the period. 

When the first century closed, the progress 
of the country appeared to have been considera- 
ble ; notwithstanding that, in comparison with 
its subsequent advancement, it now seems other- 
wise. A broad and lasting foundation had been 
laid : excellent institutions had been established ; 
much of the prejudices of former times had be- 
come removed ; a more liberal and catholic spirit 
on subjects of religious concern had begun to 
extend itself, and many things conspired to give 
promise of increasing future prosperity. Great 
men had arisen in public life and the liberal pro- 
fessions. The Mathers, father and son, were 
then sinking low in the western horizon ; Leve- 
rett, the learned, the accomplished, the excellent 
Leverett, was about to withdraw his brilliant and 
useful light. In Pemberton, great hopes had 



53 

been suddenly extinguished, but Prince ami 
Colman, were in our sky; and the crepuscular 
light had begun to flash along the East, of a great 
luminary which was about to appear ; and which 
was to mark the age with his own name, as the 
age of Franklin. 

The bloody Indian wars, which harrassed the 
people for a part of the first century; the restric- 
tions on the trade of the Colonies — added to the 
discouragements inherently belonging to all forms 
of colonial government ; the distance from Europe, 
and the small hope of immediate profit to adven- 
turers, are among the causes which had contri- 
buted to retard the progress of population. 
Perhaps it may be added, also, that during the 
period of the civil wars in England, and the 
reign of Cromwell, many persons, whose religious 
opinions and religious temper might, under other 
circumstances have induced them to join the 
New-England colonists, found reasons to remain 
m England ; cither on account of active occupa- 
tion in the scenes which were passing, or of 
an anticipation of the enjoyment, in their own 

8 



54 

country, of a form of government, civil and re- 
ligious, accommodated to their views and prin- 
ciples. The violent measures, too, pursued against 
the Colonies in the reign of Charles the second, 
the mockerj of a trial, and the forfeiture of the 
Charters, were serious evils. And during the 
open violences of the short reign of James the 
second, and the tyi'anny of Andros, as the vene- 
rable historian of Connecticut observes, '■^ All the 
motives to great actions^ to industry^ economy^ enter- 
prize, wealth, and 'population, were in a manner 
annihilated. A general inactivity and langiiish- 
ment pervaded the public body. Liberty, pro- 
perty, and every thing which ought to be dear 
to men, every day grew more and more insecure.'''^ 

With the revolution in England, a better pros- 
pect had opened on this country, as well as on 
that. The joy had been as great, at that event, 
and far more universal in JYew, than in Old Eng- 
land. A new Charter had been granted to Mas- 
sachusetts, which, although it did not confirm to 
her inhabitants all their former privileges, yet re- 
lieved them from great evils and embarrassments, 



55 

and promised future security. More than all, 
perhaps, the revolution in England, had done 
good to the general cause of liberty and justice. 
A blow had been struck, in favour of the rights 
and liberties, not of England alone, but of descen- 
dants and kinsmen of England, all over the world. 
Great political truths had been established. The 
champions of liberty had been successful in a 
fearful and perilous conilict. Somers, and Caven- 
dish, and Jekyl, and Howard, had triumphed in 
one of the most noble causes ever undertaken 
by men. A revolution had been made upon 
principle. A monarch had been dethroned, for 
violating the original compact between King and 
People. The rights of the people to partake in 
the government, and to limit the monarch by funda- 
mental rules of government, had been maintain- 
ed ; and however unjust the government of Eng- 
land might afterwards be, towards other govern- 
ments or towards her colonies, she had ceased to 
be governed herself, by the arbitrary maxims of 
the Stuarts. 

New-England had submitted to the violence of 
James the second, not longer than Old England. 



56 

Not only was it reserved to Massachusetts, that 
on her soil should be acted the first scene of that 
great revolutionary Drama, which was to take 
place near a century afterwards, but the English 
revolution itself, as far as the Colonies were con- 
cerned, commenced in Boston. A direct and 
forcible resistance to the authority of James the 
second, was the seizure and imprisonment of 
Andros, in April 1689. The pulse of Liberty 
beat as high in the extremities, as at the heart. 
The vigorous feeling of the Colony burst out, be- 
fore it was known how the parent country would 
finally conduct itself. The King's representative, 
Sir Edmund Andros, was a prisoner in the Castle 
at Boston, before it was or could be known, that 
the King himself had ceased to exercise his full 
dominion on the English throne. 

Before it was known here, whether the inva- 
sion of the Prince of Orange would or could prove 
successful ; as soon only as it was known that 
it had been undertaken, the people of Massa- 
chusetts, at the imminent hazard of their lives and 
fortunes, had accomplished the revolution as far 



67 

as respected themselves. It is probable, that, 
reasoning on general principles, and the known 
attachment of the English people to their consti- 
tution and liberties, and their deep and fixed dis- 
like of the King's religion and politics, the people 
of New-England expected a catastrophe fatal to 
the power of the reigning Prince. Yet, it was 
not cither certain enough, or near enough, to 
come to their aid against the authority of the 
crown, in that crisis which had arrived, and in 
which they trusted to put themselves, relying on 
God, and on their own courage. There were 
spirits in Massachusetts, congenial with the spirits 
of the distinguished friends of the revolution in 
England. There were those, who were fit to as- 
sociate with the boldest asserters of civil liberty ; 
and Mather himself, then in England, was not 
unworthy to be ranked with those sons of the 
church, whose firmness and spirit, in resisting 
kingly encroachment in religion, entitled them to 
the gratitude of their own and succeeding ages. 

The Second Century opened upon New-England 
under circumstances, which evinced, that much 



had already been accomplished, and that still 
better prospects, and brighter hopes, were before 
her. She had laid, deep and strong, the founda- 
tions of her society. Her religious principles 
were firm, and her moral habits exemplary. Her 
public schools had begun to diffuse widely the 
elements of knowledge ; and the College, under 
the excellent and acceptable administration of 
Leverett, had been raised to a high degree of 
credit and usefulness. ,^ 

The commercial character of the country, not- 
withstanding all discouragements, had begun to 
display itself, and five hundred vessels, then be- 
longing to Massachusetts, placed her in relation to 
commerce, thus early, at the head of the colo- 
nies. An author who wrote very near the close 
of the first century says ; " New-England is al- 
most deserving that noble name ; so mightily hath 
it increased; and from a small settlement, at first, 
is now become a very populous and flourishing 
government. The capital city, Boston, is a place 
of great wealth and trade ; and by much the 
largest of any in the English empire of Ameri- 



59 

ca ; and not exceeded but by few cities, per- 
haps two or three, in all the American world. 

But, if our ancestors at the close of the first 
century, could look back with joy, and even 
admiration, at the progress of the country ; Avhat 
emotions must we not feel, when, from the point 
in which we stand, we also look back and run 
along the events of the century which has now 
closed ? The country, Avhich then, as we have 
seen, was thought deserving of a " noble name ;" 
which then had " mightily increased," and be- 
come " very populous ;" what was it, in compari- 
son with what our eyes behold it ? At that 
period, a very great proportion of its inhabitants 
lived in the Eastern section of Massachusetts 
proper, and in this colony. In Connecticut, there 
were towns along the coast, some of them re- 
spectable, but in the interior, all was a wilderness 
beyond Hartford. On Connecticut river, settle- 
ments had proceeded as far up as Deerfield, and 
fort Dummer had been built, near where is now 
the South line of New-Hampshire. In New-Hamp- 
ihire, no settlement was then begun thirty miles 



6d 

from the mouth of Piscataqua river, and, in what 
is now Maine, the inhabitants were confined to the 
coast. The aggregate of the whole population of 
New-England did not exceed one hundred and 
sixty thousand. Its present amount is probably 
one million seven hundred thousand. Instead of 
being confined to its former limits, her population 
has rolled backward and filled up the spaces includ- 
ed within her actual local boundaries. Not this 
only, but it has overflowed those boundaries, and 
the waves of emigration have pressed, farther 
and farther, toward the west. The Alleghany 
has not checked it ; the banks of the Ohio have 
been covered with it. New-England farms, houses, 
villages, and churches spread over, and adorn the 
immense extent from the Ohio to Lake Erie ; and 
stretch along, from the Alleghany, onwards be- 
yond the Miamies, and towards the Falls of St. 
Anthony. Two thousand miles, westward from 
the rock where their fathers landed, may now 
be found the sons of the Pilgrims ; cultivating 
smiling fields, rearing towns and villages, and 
cherishing, we trust, the patrimonial blessings of 
wise institutions, of liberty, and religion. The 



61 

world has seen nothing like this. Regions large 
enough to be empires, and which, half a century 
ago, were known only as remote and unexplored 
wildernesses, are now teeming with population, 
and prosperous in all the great concerns of life ; 
in good governments, the means of subsistence, 
and social happiness. It may be safely asserted, 
that there are now more than a million of people, 
descendants of New-England ancestry, living 
free and happy, in regions, which hardly sixty 
years ago, were tracts of unpenetrated forest. 
Nor do rivers, or mountains, or seas resist the 
progress of industry and enterprise. Ere long, 
the sons of the Pilgrims will be on the shores of 
the Pacific. The imagination hardly keeps up 
with the progress of population, improvement, 
and civilization. 

It is now five and forty years, since the growth 
and rising glory of America were portrayed, in 
the English parliament, with inimitable beauty, by 
the most consummate orator of modern times. 
Going back somewhat more than half a century, 
and describing our progress, as foreseen, from 
9 



62 

that point, by his amiable friend Lord Bathurst^ 
then living, he spoke of the wonderful progress 
which America had made, during the period of a 
single human life. There is no American heart, 
I imagine, that does not glow, both with conscious 
patriotic pride, and admiration for one of the 
happiest efforts of eloquence, so often as the 
vision, of "^ that little speck, scarce visible in the 
mass of national interest, a small seminal principle, 
rather than a formed body," and the progress of 
its astonishing development and growth, are re- 
called to the recollection. But a stronger feeling 
might be produced, if we were able to take up 
this prophetic description where he left it ; and 
placing ourselves at the point of time in which he 
was speaking, to set forth with equal felicity, the 
subsequent progress of the country. There is 
yet among the living a most distinguished and 
venerable name, a descendant of the Pilgrims j 
one who has been attended through life by a 
great and fortunate genius ; a man illustrious by 
his own great merits, and favoured of Heaven in 
the long continuation of his years. The time 
when the English orator was thus speaking of 



65 

America, preceded, but by a few days, the actual 
openin*^ of the revolutionary Drama at Lexing- 
ton. He to whom I have alluded, then at the 
age of forty, was among the most zealous and able 
defenders of the violated rights of his country. 
He seemed already to have filled a full measure 
of public service, and attained an honorable fame. 
The moment was full of dilficulty and danger, and 
big with events of immeasurable importance. 
The country was on the very brink of a civil war, 
of which no man could foretell the duration or 
the result. Something more than a courageous 
hope, or characteristic ardour, would have been 
necessary to impress the glorious prospect on his 
belief, if, at that moment, before the sound of the 
first shock of actual war had reached his ears, 
some attendant spirit had opened to him the 
vision of the future ; if it had said to him, " The 
blow is struck, and America is severed from Eng- 
land forever !" if it had informed him, that he 
himself, the next annual revolution of the sun, 
should put his own hand to the great Instrument 
of Independence, and write his name where all 
nations should behold it, and all time should not 



64 

efface it ; that ere long he himself should main- 
tain the interest and represent the sovereignty of 
his new-born Country, in the proudest courts of 
Europe ; that he should one day exercise her su- 
preme magistracy; that he should yet live to be- 
hold ten millions of fellow citizens paying him 
the homage of their deepest gratitude and kindest 
affections ; that he should see distinguished talent 
and high public trust resting where his name 
rested ; that he should even see with his own un- 
clouded eyes, the close of the second century of 
New-England, who had begun life almost with its 
commencement, and lived through nearly half the 
whole history of his country ; and that on the morn- 
ing of this auspicious day, he should be found in 
the political councils of his native state, revising, 
by the light of experience, that system of govern- 
ment, which forty years before he had assisted to 
frame and establish ; and great and happy as he 
should then behold his country, there should be 
nothing in prospect to cloud the scene, nothing to 
check the ardour of that confident and patriotic 
hope, which should glow in his bosom to the end 
of his long protracted and happy life. 



G5 

It would far exceed the limits of this discourse, 
even to mention the principal events in the civil 
and political history of NcAv-England during the 
century ; the more so, as for the last half of the 
period, that history has been, most happily, close- 
ly interwoven with the general history of the 
United States. New-England bore an honora- 
ble part in the wars which took place between 
England and France. The capture of Louisburg 
gave her a character for military achievement ; 
and in the war which terminated with the peace 
of 1763, her exertions on the frontiers were of 
most essential service as well to the mother coun- 
try as to all the colonies. 

In New- England the war of the revolution 
commenced. I address those who remember the 
memorable 19th of April 1775 ; who shortly af- 
ter saw the burning spires of Charlestown ; who 
beheld the deeds of Prescott, and heard the 
voice of Putnam, amidst the storm of war, and 
saw the generous Warren fall, the first distin- 
guished victim in the cause of liberty. It would 
be superfluous to say, that no portion of the coun- 



66 

try did more than the states of New-England, to 
bring the revolutionary struggle to a successful 
issue. It is scarcely less to her credit, that she 
saw early the necessity of a closer union of the 
states, and gave an efficient and indispensable aid 
to the establishment and organization of the fede- 
ral government. 

Perhaps we might safely say, that a new 
spirit, and a new excitement began to exist 
here, about the middle of the last century. 
To whatever causes it may be imputed, there 
seems then to have commenced a more rapid 
improvement. The colonies had attracted more 
of the attention of the mother country, and some 
renown in arms had been acquired. Lord Chat- 
ham was the first English minister who attached 
high importance to these possessions of the crown, 
and who foresaw any thing of their future growth 
and extension. His opinion was, that the great 
rival of England was chiefly to be feared as a ma- 
ritime and commercial power, and to drive her 
out of North America, and deprive her of her 
West India possessions was a leading object in 



67 

his policy. He dwelt often on the fisheries, as 
nurseries for British seamen, and the colonial 
trade, as furnishing them employment. The war, 
conducted by him with so much vigour, terminnt- 
ed in a Peace, by which Canada was ceded to 
England. The effect of this w^as immediately 
visible in the New-England colonies ; for the fear 
of Indian hostilities on the frontiers being now 
happily removed, settlements went on with an 
activity before that time altogether unprecedent- 
ed, and public affairs wore a new and encouraging 
aspect. Shortly after this fortunate termination 
of the French war, the interesting topics connect- 
ed with the taxation of America by the British 
Parliament began to be discussed, and the atten- 
tion and all the faculties of the people drawn to- 
wards them. There is perhaps no portion of our 
history more full of interest than the period from 
1760 to the actual commencement of the war. 
The progress of opinion, in this period, though 
less known, is not less important, than the pro- 
gress of arms afterwards. Nothing deserves 
more consideration than those events and discus- 
sions which affected the public sentiment, and 



68 

settled the Revolution in men's minds, before 
hostilities openly broke out. 

Internal improvement followed the establish- 
ment, and prosperous commencement, of the pre- 
sent government. More has been done for roads, 
canals, and other public works, within the last 
thirty years, than in all our former history. In 
the first of these particulars, few countries excel 
the New-Ensfland States. The astonishing^ in- 
crease of their navigation and trade is known to 
every one, and now belongs to the history of our 
national wealth. 

We may flatter ourselves, too, that literature 
and taste have not been stationary, and that some 
advancement has been made in the elegant, as 
well as in the useful arts. 

The nature and constitution of society and 
government, in this country, are interesting topics, 
to which I would devote what remains of the 
time allowed to this occasion. Of our system of 
government, the first thing to be said, is, that it is 



69 

really and practically a free system. It originates 
entirely with the people, ami rests on no other 
foundation than their assent. To judge ol Its ac- 
tual operation, it is not enough to look merely at 
the form of its construction. The practical cha- 
racter of government depends often on a variety 
of considerations, besides the abstract frame of 
its constitutional organization. Among these, are 
the condition and tenure of property ; the laws 
regulating Its alienation and descent ; the presence 
or absence of a military power ; an armed or un- 
armed yeomanry; the spirit of the age, and the 
degree of general intelligence. In these respects 
it cannot be denied, that the circumstances of this 
country are most favourable to the hope of main- 
taining the government of a great nation on prin- 
ciples entirely popular. In the absence of mili- 
tary power, the nature of government must 
essentially depend on the manner in which pro- 
perty is holden and distributed. There Is a natu- 
ral influence belonging to property, whether it 
exists in many hands or few ; and it is on the rights 
of property, that both despotism and unrestrained 
popular violence ordinarily commence their at- 

10 



70 

tacks. Our ancestors be^an their system of 
government here, under a condition of compara- 
tive equality, in regard to wealth, and their ear- 
ly laws were of a nature to favour and continue 
this equality.* A republican form of government 
rests, not more on political Constitutions, than on 
those laws which regulate the descent and trans- 
mission of property. — Governments like ours 
could not have been maintained, where property 
was holden according to the principles of the feu- 
dal system ; nor, on the other hand, could the feu- 
dal Constitution possibly exist with us. Our New- 
England ancestors brought hither no great capi- 
tals, from Europe ; and if they had, there was 
nothing productive, in which they could have 
been invested. They left behind them the 



* The contents of several of the following pages will be 
found also in the printed account of the proceedings of the 
Massachusetts convention, in some remarks made by the au- 
thor a few days before the delivery of this discourse. As 
those remarks were originally written for this discourse, 
it was thought proper not to omit them, in the publication, 
notwithstanding this circumstance. 



71 

whole feudal policy of the other continent. 
They broke away, at once, from the system of 
military service, established in the dark ages, and 
which continues, down even to the present time, 
more or less to aifect the condition of property 
all over Europe. They came to a new country. 
There were, as yet, no lands yielding rt-nt, and no 
tenants rendering service. The whole soil was 
unreclaimed from barbarism. They were them- 
selves, either from their original condition, or 
from the necessity of their common interest, near- 
ly on a general level, in respect to property. 
Their situation demanded a parcelling out and 
division of the lands ; and it may be fairly said, 
that this necessary act Jixed the future frame and 
form of their government. The character of their 
political institutions was determined by the funda- 
mental laws respecting property. The laws ren- 
dered estates divisible amons: sons and dausfhters. 
The right of primogeniture, at first limited, and 
curtailed, was afterwards abolished. The pro- 
perty was all freehold. The entailment of es- 
tates, long trusts, and the other processes for 
fettering and tying up inheritances, were not ap- 



72 

plicable to the condition of society, and seldom 
made use of. On the contrary, alienation of the 
land was every way facilitated, even to the sub- 
jecting of it to every species of debt. The 
estabhshment of public registries, and the simplici- 
ty of our forms of conveyance, have greatly facili- 
tated the change of real estate, from one proprie- 
tor to another. The consequence of all these 
causes has been, a great subdivision of the soil, 
and a great equality of condition ; the true basis 
most certain?y of a popular government. — " If 
the people," says Harrington, " hold three parts 
in four of the territory, it is plain there can nei- 
ther be any single person nor nobility able to dis- 
pute the government with them ; in this case, 
therefore, except force be interposed, they govern 
themselves." 

The history of other nations may teach us how 
favourable to public liberty is the division of the 
soil into small frecliolds, and a system of laws, of 
which the tendency is, w^ithout violence or injus- 
tice, to produce and to preserve a degree of 
equality of property. It has been estimated, if I 



/ 



73 

mistake not, that about the time of Henry tlie 
VII., lour lll'ths ot" the land in England, was 
holden bv the ffreat barons and ecclesiastics. 
The cuects of a growing commerce soon after- 
wards began to break in on this state of things, and 
before the revolution in 1688 a vast change had 
been wrought. It may be thought probable, that, 
for the last half century, the process of subdivi- 
sion in England, has been retarded, if not re versed ; 
that the great weight of taxation has compelled 
many of the lesser freeholders to dispose of their 
estates, and to seek employment in the army and 
navy ; in the professions of civil life ; in com- 
merce or in the colonies. The effect of this on 
/the British Constitution cannot but be most unfa- 



vourable. A i'ew large estates grow larger ; but 
( the number of those who have no estates also 
f increases ; and there may be danger, lest the in- 
) equality of property become so great, that those 
{ who possess it may be dispossessed by force ; in 
I other words, that the government may be over- 
\ turned. 

V 

A most interesting experiment of the effect of 



74 

a subdivision of property on government, is now 
making- in France. It is understood, that the law 
regulating the transmission of property, in that 
country, now divides it, real and personal, among 
all the children, equally, both sons and daughters; 
and that there is, also, a very great restraint on 
the power of making dispositions of property by 
will. It has been supposed, that the eifects of 
this might probably be, in time, to break up the 
soil into such small subdivisions, that the proprie- 
tors would be too poor to resist the encroach- 
ments of executive power. I think far otherwise. 
What is lost in individual wealth, will be more 
than gained, in numbers, in intelligence, and in a 
sympathy of sentiment. If mdeed, only one, or a 
few landholders were to resist the crown, like the 
barons of England, they must, of course, be great 
and powerful landholders with multitudes of re- 
tainers, to promise success. But if the proprie- 
tors of a given extent of territory are summoned 
to resistance, there is no reason to believe that 
such resistance would be less forcible, or less suc- 
cessful, because the number of such proprietors 
should be great. Each would perceive his own 



75 

importance, and bis own interest, and would feel 
that natural elevation of" character which IJie 
consciousness of property inspires. A common 
sentiment would unite all, and numbers would not 
only add strengtb, but excite enthusiasm. It is 
true, that France possesses a vast military force, 
under the direction of an hereditary executive 
government ; and military power, it is possible, 
may overthrow any government. It is, in vain, 
however, in this period of the world, to look for 
security against military power, to the arm of the 
great landholders. That notion is derived from 
a state of things long since past ; a state in which 
a feudal baron, with his retainers, might stand 
against the sovereign, who was himself but the 
greatest baron, and his retainers. But at present, 
what could the richest landholder do, against one 
^regiment of disciplined troops ? Other securities, 
therefore, against the prevalence of military pow- 
er must be provided. Happily for us, we are not 
so situated as that any purpose of national de- 
fence requires, ordinarily and constantly, such a 
military force as might seriously endanger our 
liberties. 



76 

In respect, however, to the recent law ol 
succession In France, to whicli I have aHuded, I 
would, presumptuously perhaps, hazard a conjec- 
ture, that if the government do not change the 
law, the law, in half a century, will change the 
government ; and that this change will be not in 
favour of the power of the crown, as some Euro- 
pean writers have supposed, but against it. 
Those writers only reason upon what they think 
correct general principles, in relation to this sub- 
ject. They acknowledge a want of experience. 
Here we have had that experience ; and we 
know that a multitude of small proprietors, acting 
with intelligence, and that enthusiasm which a 
common cause inspires, constitute not only a 
formidable, but an invincible power. 

The true principle of a free and popular go- 
vernment would seem to be, so to construct it, as 
to give to all, or at least to a very great majority, 
an interest in its preservation : to found it, as 
other things are founded, on men's interest. The 
stability of government requires that those who 
desire its continuance should be more powerful 



77 

than those who desire its dissolution. This pow- 
er, of course, is not always to be measured by 
mere numbers. — Education, wealth, talents, are 
all parts and elements of the general aggregate of 
power ; but numbers, nevertheless, constitute 
ordinarily the most important consideration, un- 
less indeed there bo a military force, in the hands 
of the few, by which they can control the many. 
In this country we have actually existing systems of 
government, in the maintenance of which, it should 
seem, a great majority, both in numbers and in 
other means of power and influence, must see 
their interest. But this state of things is not 
brought about solely by written political consti- 
tutions, or the mere manner of organizing the 
government ; but also by the laws which regulate 
the descent and transmission of property. The 
freest government, if it could exist, would not b« 
long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were 
to create a rapid accumulation of property in few 
hands, and to render the great mass of the popula- 
tion dependent and pennyless. In such a case, the/ 
popular power would be likely to break in upon the 
rights of property, or else the influence of property 
U 



78 

to limit and control the exercise of popular power. 
— Universal sulFrage, for example, could not long 
exist in a community, where there was great ine- 
quality of property. The holders of estates 
would be obliged in such case, either, in some 
way, to restrain the right of suffrage ; or else 
such right of suffrage would, long before, divide the 
property. In the nature of things, those who 
have not property, and see their neighbours pos- 
sess much more than they think, them to need, 
cannot be favourable to laws made for the pro- 
tection of property. When this class becomes 
numerous, it grows clamorous. It looks on pro- 
perty as its prey and plunder, and is naturally 
ready, at all times, for violence and revolution. 

It would seem, then, to be the part of political 
wisdom, to found government on property ; and to 
establish such distribution of property, by the 
laws which regulate its transmission and aliena- 
tion, as to interest the great majority of society 
in the support of the government. This is, I 
imagine, the true theory and the actual practice 
of our republican institutions. With property 



79 

divided, as we have it, no other government than 
that of a rejiubhc could be maintained, even were 
we foolish enouirli to desire it. There is reason, 
therefore, to expect a Ions; continuance of our sys- 
tems. Party and passion, doubtless, may pre- 
vail at times, and much temporary mischief be 
done. Even modes and forms may be changed, 
and perhaps for the worse. But a great revo- 
lution, in regard to property, must take place, 
before our governments can be moved from their 
republican basis, unless they be violently struck off 
by military power. The people possess the pro- 
perty, more emphatically than it could ever be 
said of the people of any other country, and they 
can have no interest to overturn a government 
which protects that property by equal laws. 

Let it not be supposed, that this state of thino-s 
possesses too strong tendencies towards the pro- 
duction of a dead and uninteresting level in socie- 
ty. Such tendencies are sufficiently counteracted 
by the infinite diversities in the characters and 
fortunes of individuals. Talent, activity, indus- 
try, and enterprize tend at all times to produce 



80 

inequality and distinction ; and there is room 
still for the accumulation of wealth, with its 
great advantages, to all reasonable and useful 
extent. It has been often urged against the state 
of society in America, that it furnishes no class of 
men of fortune and leisure. This may be partly 
true, but it is not entirely so, and the evil, if it be 
one, would affect rather the progress of taste 
and literature, than the general prosperity of the 
|>eople. But the promotion of taste and litera- 
ture cannot be primary objects of political insti- 
tutions ; and if they could, it might be doubted, 
whether, in the long course of things, as much is not 
gained by a wide diffusion of general knowledge, 
as is lost by abridging the number of those whom 
fortune and leisure enable to devote themselves ex- 
clusively to scientific and literary pursuits. How- 
ever this may be, it is to be considered that it is 
the spirit of our system to be equal, and general, 
and if there be particular disadvantages incident 
to this, they are far more than counterbalanc- 
ed by the benefits which weigh against them. 
The important concerns of society are generally 
conducted, in all countries, by the men of busi- 
ness and practical ability ; and even in matters of 



81> 

taste and literature, the advantages of mere leisure 
are liable to be over-rated. If" there exist ade- 
quate means of education, and the love of letters 
be excited, that love will find its way to the ob- 
ject of its desire, through the crowd and pressure 
of the most busy society. 

Connected with this division of property, and 
the consequent participation of the great mass of 
people, in its possession and enjoyments, is the 
system of representation, which is admirably 
accommodated to our condition, better under- 
stood among us, and more familiarly and exten- 
sively practised, in the higher and in the lower 
departments of government, than it has been with 
any other people. Great facility has been given 
to this in New-England by the early division of 
the country into townships or small districts, in 
which all concerns of local police are regulated, 
and in which representatives to the Legislature 
are elected. Nothing can exceed the utility of 
these little bodies. They are so many Councils, 
or Parliaments, in which common interests are dis- 
cussed, and useful knowledge acquired and com- 
municated. 



82 

The division of governments into departments^ 
and the division, again, of the legislative depart- 
ment into two chambers, are essential provisions 
in our systems. This last, although not new in 
itself, yet seems to be new in its application to 
governments wholly popular. The Grecian Re- 
publics, it is plain, knew nothing of it ; and in 
Rome, the check and balance of legislative pow- 
er, such as it was, lay between the people, and the 
senate. Indeed few things are more difficult than 
to ascertain accurately the true nature and con- 
struction of the Roman Commonwealth. The re- 
lative power of the senate and the people, the 
Consuls and the Tribunes, appears not to have 
been at all times the same, nor at any time accurate- 
ly defined or strictly observed. Cicero, indeed, 
describes to us an admirable arrangement of poli- 
tical power, and a balance of the constitution, in 
that beautiful passage, in which he compares the 
democracies of Greece with the Roman Com- 
monwealth. " O morem preclarum, disciplinamque, 
quam a majoribus accepimus, si quidem teneremus ! 
sed nescio quo pacto jam de manibus elabitur. JYul- 
lam enim illi nostri sapientissimi et sanetissimi viri 



83 

vim concionis esse voluerunt, quae scisseret plebs, 
aid quae populus juberet ; summota condone^ distri- 
butis partibus^ tributim, et centuriatim^ descripiis or^ 
dinibus, classibus, mtatibiis, auditis auctoribus^ re 
multos dies proinulgata ct cognita, juberi vetarique 
voliienoit. Graeccrnm autem totae respiiblicae sedcn- 
tis concionis tenisritate administrantur" 

But at what time this wise system existed in 
this perfection at Rome, no proofs remain to 
show. Her constitution, originally framed for a 
monarchy, never seemed to be adjusted, in its 
several parts, after the expulsion of the kingo. 
Liberty there was, but it was a disputatious, an 
uncertain, an ill-secured liberty. The patrician 
and plebeian orders, instead of being matched and 
joined, each in its just place and proportion, to 
sustain the fabric of the state, were rather like 
hostile powers, in perpetual conflict. With us, 
an attempt has been made, and so far not without 
success, to divide representation into Chambers, 
and by difference of age, character, qualification 
or mode of election, to establish salutary checks, 
HI governments altogether elective. 



84 

Having detained you so long with these obser- 
vations, I must yet advert to another most inter- 
esting topic, the Free Schools. In this particular 
New-England may be allowed to claim, I think, a 
merit of a peculiar character. She early adopted 
and has constantly maintained the principle, that 
it is the undoubted right, and the bounden duty 
of government, to provide for the instruction of all 
youth. That Avhich is elsewhere left to chance, 
or to charity, we secure by law. For the purpose 
of public instruction, we hold every man subject 
to taxation in proportion to his property, and we 
look not to the question, whether he himself 
have, or have not, children to be benefited by the 
education for which he pays. We regard it as a 
wise and liberal system of police, by which pro- 
perty, and life, and the peace of society are se- 
cured. We seek to prevent, in some measure, 
the extension of the penal code, by inspiring a 
salutary and conservative principle of virtue and 
of knowledge in an early age. We hope to ex- 
cite a feeling of respectability, and a sense of cha- 
racter, by enlarging the capacity, and increasing 
the sphere of intellectual enjoyment. By general 



85 

Instruction, we seek, as far as possible, to purify 
the whole moral atmosphere ; to keep good sen- 
timents uppermost, and to turn the strong current 
of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of 
the law, and the denunciations of religion, against 
immorality and crime. We hope for a security, 
beyond the law, and above the law, in the pre- 
valence of enlightened and well principled moral 
sentiment. We hope to continue and prolong 
the time, when, in the villages and farm houses of 
New-England, there may be undisturbed sleep 
within unbarred doors. And knowing that our 
government rests directly on the public will, that 
we may preserve it, we endeavour to give a safe 
and proper direction to that public will. We do 
not, indeed, expect all men to be philosophers or 
statesmen ; but we confidently trust, and our ex- 
pectation of the duration of our system of govern- 
ment rests on that trust, that by the diffusion of 
general knowledge and good and virtuous senti- 
ments, the political fabric may be secure, as well 
against open violence and overthrow, as against 
the sloAv but sure undermining: of licentiousness. 
12 



96 

We know, that at the present time, an attempt 
is making in the English ParHament to provide by 
law for the education of the poor, and that a gen- 
tleman of distinguished character, (Mr. Brougham) 
has taken the lead, in presenting a plan to go- 
vernment for carrying that purpose into effect. 
And yet, although the representatives of the 
three kingdoms listened to him with astonish- 
ment as well as delight, we hear no principles, 
with which we ourselves have not been familiar 
from youth ; we see nothing in the plan, but an 
approach towards that system which has been 
established in New-England for more than a cen- 
tury and a half. It is said that in England, not 
more than one child in fifteen possesses the means 
of being taught to read and write ; in Wales, one 
in twenty ; in France, until lately, when some im- 
provement was made, not more than one in thirty- 
five. Now, it is hardly too strong to say, that in 
New-England, every child possesses such means. 
It would be difficult to find an instance to the con- 
trary, unless where it should be owing to the negli- 
gence of the parent ; — and in truth the means are 
actually used and enjoyed by nearly every one. 



97 

A youth of fifteen, of either sex, who cannot both 
read and write, is very unfrequently to be found. 
Who can make this comparison, or contemplate 
this spectacle, without delight and a feeling of 
just pride ? Does any history shew property more 
beneficently applied ? Did any government ever 
subject the property of those Avho have estates, 
to a burden, for a purpose more favourable to 
the poor, or more useful to the whole commu- 
nity ? 

A conviction of the importance of public in- 
struction was one of the earliest sentiments of our 
ancestors. No lawgiver of ancient or modern times 
has expressed more just opinions, or adopted wiser 
measures, than the early records of the Colony 
of Plymouth show to have prevailed here. As- 
sembled on this very spot, a hundred and fifty- 
three years ago, the legislature of this Colony 
declared ; " For as much as the maintenance of 
good literature doth much tend to the advance- 
ment of the weal and flourishing state of Societies 
and Republics, this Court doth therefore order, 
that in whatever township in this government, 



88 

consisting of fifty families or upwards, any meet 
man shall be obtained to teach a grammar school, 
such township shall allow at least twelve pounds, 
to be raised by rate, on all the inhabitants." 

Having provided, that all youth should be in- 
structed in the elements of learning by the insti- 
tution of Free Schools, our ancestors had yet 
another duty to perform. Men were to be edu- 
cated for the professions, and the public. For 
this purpose they founded the University, and 
with incredible zeal and perseverance they cher- 
ished and supported it, through all trials and dis- 
couragements. On the subject of the University, 
it is not possible for a son of New-England to 
think without pleasure, nor to speak without 
emotion. Nothing confers more honour on the 
state where it is established, or more utility on 
the country at large. A respectable University 
is an establishment, which must be the work of 
time. If pecuniary means were not wanting, 
no new institution could possess character and 
respectability at once. We owe deep obligation 
to our ancestors, who began, almost on the mo- 



89 

ment of their arrival, the work of building up this 
institution. 

Although established in a different govern- 
ment, the Colony of Plymouth manifested warm 
friendship for Harvard College. At an early 
period, its government took measures to pro- 
mote a general subscription throughout all the 
towns in this Colony, in aid of its small funds. 
Other Colleges were subsequently founded and 
endowed, in other places, as the ability of the 
people allowed ; and we may flatter ourselves, 
that the means of education, at present enjoyed in 
New-England, are not only adequate to the diffusion 
of the elements of knowledge among all classes, 
but sufficient also for respectable attainments in 
literature and the sciences. 

Lastly, our ancestors have founded their sys- 
tem of government on morality and religious sen- 
timent. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely 
be trusted on any other foundation than religious 
principle, nor any government be secure which 
is not supported by moral habits. Living under 



90 

the heavenly light of revelation, they hoped to 
find all the social dispositions, all the duties which 
men owe to each other and to society, enforc- 
ed and performed. Whatever makes men good 
christians, makes them good citizens. Our fa- 
thers came here to enjoy their religion free and 
unmolested ; and, at the end of two centuries, 
there is nothing upon which we can pronounce 
more confidently, nothing of which we can ex- 
press a more deep and earnest conviction, than 
of the inestimable importance of that religion to 
man, both in regard to this life, and that which is 
to come. 

If the blessings of our political and social con- 
dition have not now been too highly estimated, 
we cannot well over-rate the responsibility and 
duty which they impose upon us. We hold these 
institutions of government, religion, and learning, 
to be transmitted, as well as enjoyed. We are 
in the line of conveyance, through which what- 
ever has been obtained by the spirit and efforts 
of our ancestors, is to be communicated to our 
children. 



91 

We arc bound to maintain public liberty, and 
by the example of our own systems, to convince 
the world, that order, and law, religion and mo- 
rality, the rights of conscience, the rights of per- 
sons, and the rights of property, may all be pre- 
served and secured, in the most perfect manner, 
by a government entirely and purely elective. 
If we fail in this, our disaster will be signal, and 
will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet 
been found, in support of those opinions, which 
maintain that government can rest safely on noth- 
ing but power and coercion. As far as expe- 
rience may show errors in our establishments, we 
are bound to correct them ; and if any practices 
exist, contrary to the principles of justice and hu- 
manity, within the reach of our laws or our in- 
fluenccj we are inexcusable if we do not exert 
ourselves to restrain and abolish them. 

I deem it my duty on this occasion to suggest, 
that the land is not yet wholly free from the con- 
tamination of a traffic, at which every feeling of 
humanity must forever revolt — I mean the African 
slave trade. Neither public sentiment, nor the 
law, has hitherto been able entirely to put an 



92 

end to this odious and abominable trade. At the 
moment when God, in his mercy, has blessed the 
Christian world with an universal peace, there is 
reason to fear, that to the disgrace of the Chris- 
tian name and character, new efforts are making 
for the extension of this trade, by subjects and 
citizens of Christian states, in whose hearts no 
sentiment of humanity or justice inhabits, and 
over whom neither the fear of God nor the fear 
of man exercises a control. In the sight of our 
law, the African slave trader is a pirate and a 
felon ; and in the sight of heaven, an offender far 
beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. 
There is no brighter part of our history, than 
that which records the measures which have 
been adopted by the government, at an early 
day, and at different times since, for the suppres- 
sion of this traffic; and I would call on all the 
true sons of New-England, to co-operate with 
the laws of man, and the justice of heaven. If 
there be, within the extent of our knowledge or 
mfluence, any participation in this traffic, let us 
pledge ourselves here, upon the Rock of Ply- 
mouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit, 



93 

that the land of the Pilgrims should hear the 
shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammer, 
I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles 
and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I 
see the visages of those, who by stealth, and at 
midnight, labour in this work of hell, foul and 
dark, as may become the artificers of such in- 
struments of misery and torture. Let that spot 
be purified, or let it cease to be of New-England. 
Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the 
Christian world ; let it be put out of the circle of 
human sympathies and human regards, and let ci- 
vilized man henceforth have no communion with it. 

I would invoke those who fill the seats of 
justice, and all who minister at her altar, that 
they execute the wholesome and necessary se- 
verity of the law. I invoke the ministers of our 
religion, that they proclaim its denunciation of 
these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the 
authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent, 
whenever, or wherever, there may be a sinner 
bloody with this guilt, within the hearing of its 
voice, the pulpit is false to its trust. I call on 
13 



94: 

the fair merchant, who has reaped his harvest 
upon the seas, that he assist in scourging from 
those seas the worst pirates which ever infested 
them. That ocean, which seeras to wave with a 
gentle magnificence to waft the burdens of an 
honest commerce, and to roll along its treasures 
with a conscious pride ; that ocean, which hardy 
industry regards, even when the winds have 
ruffled its surface, as a field of grateful toil ; what 
is it to the victim of this oppression, when he is 
brought to its shores, and looks forth upon it, for 
the first time, from beneath chains, and bleeding 
with stripes ? What is it to him, but a wide 
spread prospect of suffering, anguish and death ? 
Nor do the skies smile longer, nor is the air lon- 
ger fragrant to him. The sun is cast down from 
heaven. An inhuman and accursed traffic has 
cut him off in his manhood, or in his youth, from 
every enjoyment belonging to his being, and 
every blessing which his Creator intended for 
him. 

The Christian communities send forth their 
emissaries of religion and letters, who stop, here 
and there, along the coast of the vast continent 



95 

of Africa, and with painful and tedious efforts, 
make some almost imperceptible progress in the 
communication of knowledge, and in the general 
improvement of the natives who are immediately 
about them. Not thus slow and imperceptible 
is the transmission of the vices and bad passions 
which the subjects of Christian states carry to 
the land. The slave trade having touched the 
coast, its influence and its evils spread, like a 
pestilence, over the Avhole continent, making sa- 
vage wars more savage, and more frequent, and 
adding new and fierce passions to the contests of 
barbarians. 

I pursue this topic no further ; except again to 
say, that all Christendom being now blessed with 
peace, is bound by every thing which belongs to its 
character, and to the character of the present 
age, to put a stop to this inhuman and disgraceful 
traffic. 

We are bound not only to maintain the gene- 
ral principles of public liberty, but to support also 
those existing forms of government, which have 



96 

so well secured its enjoyment, and so highly pro- 
moted the public prosperity. It is now more 
than thirty years that these States have been 
united under the Federal Constitution, and what- 
ever fortune may await them hereafter, it is im- 
possible that this period of their history should 
not be regarded as distinguished by signal pros- 
perity and success. They must be sanguine, in- 
deed, who can hope for benefit from change. 
Whatever division of the public judgment may 
have existed in relation to particular measures of 
the government, all must agree, one should think, 
in the opinion, that in its general course it has 
been eminently productive of public happiness. 
Its most ardent friends could not well have hop- 
ed from it more than it has accomplished ; and 
those who disbelieved or doubted ought to feel 
less concern about predictions, which the event 
has not verified, than pleasure in the good which 
has been obtained. Whoever shall hereafter 
write this part of our history, although he may 
see occasional errors or defects, will be able to 
record no great failure in the ends and objects of 
government. Still less will he be able to record 



97' 

any series' of lawless and despotic acts, or any 
successful usurpation. His page will contain no 
exhibition of provinces depopulated, of civil au- 
thority habitually trampled down by military 
power, or of a community crushed by the burden 
of taxation. He will speak, rather, of public 
liberty protected, and public happiness advanc- 
ed ; of increased revenue, and population aug- 
mented beyond all example ; of the growth of 
commerce, manufactures, and the arts ; and of 
that happy condition, in which the restraint and 
coercion of government are almost invisible and 
imperceptible, and its influence felt only in the 
benefits which it confers. We can entertain no 
better wish for our country than that this govern- 
ment may be preserved ; nor have we a clearer 
duty than to maintain and support it in the full 
exercise of all its just constitutional powers. 

The cause of science and literature also impo- 
ses upon us an important and delicate trust. 
The wealth and population of the country are 
noAV so far advanced, as to authorize the expec- 
tation of a correct literature, and a well formed 



98 

taste, as well as respectable progress in the ab- 
struse sciences. The country has risen from a 
state of colonial dependency ; it has established 
an independent government, and is now in the 
undisturbed enjoyment of peace and political 
security. The elements of knowledge are uni- 
versally diffused, and the reading portion of the 
community large. Let us hope that the present 
may be an auspicious era of literature. If, al- 
most on the day of their landing, our ancestors 
founded schools and endowed colleges, what obli- 
gations do not rest upon us, living under circum- 
stances so much more favourable both for pro- 
viding and for using the means of education ? 
Literature becomes free institutions. It is the 
graceful ornament of civil liberty, and a happy 
restraint on the asperities, which political contro- 
versy sometimes occasions. Just taste is not only 
an embellishment of society, but it rises almost 
to the rank of the virtues, and diffuses positive 
good throughout the whole extent of its influence. 
There is a connexion between right feeling and 
right principles, and truth in taste is allied with 
truth in morality. With nothing in our past his- 



99 

tory to discourage us, and with something in our 
present condition and prospects to animate us, let 
us hope, that as it is our fortune to Hve in an age 
wlien we may behold a wonderful advancement 
of the country in all its other great interests, we 
may see also equal progress and success attend 
the cause of letters. 

Finally, let us not forget the religious character 
of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither 
by their high veneration for the Christian Reli- 
gion. They journeyed by its light, and laboured 
in its hope. They sought to incorporate its prin- 
ciples with the elements of their society, and to 
diffuse its influence through all their institutions, 
civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these 
sentiments, and extend this influence still more 
widely ; in the full conviction, that that is tlie 
happiest society, which partakes in the highest 
degree of the mild and peaceable spirit of Chrjs;:^^ 
tianity. 

The hours of this day are rapidly flying, and 
this occasion will soon be passed. Neither we 



100 

nor our children can expect to behold its return. 
They are in the distant regions of futurity, they 
exist only in the all-creating power of God, who 
shall stand here, a hundred years hence, to trace, 
through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, and 
to survey, as we have now surveyed, the pro- 
gress of their country, during the lapse of a cen- 
tury. We would anticipate their concurrence 
with us in our sentiments of deep regard for our 
common ancestors. We would anticipate and 
partake the pleasure with Avhich they will then 
recount the steps of New-England's advance- 
ment. On the morning of that day, although it 
will not disturb us in our repose, the voice of 
acclamation and gratitude, commencing on the 
Rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through 
millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose 
itself in the murmurs of the Pacific seas. 

We would leave for the consideration of those 
who shall then occupy our places, some proof 
that we hold the blessings transmitted from our 
fathers in just estimation ; some proof of our 
attachment to the cause of good government, 



101 

and of civil and religious liberty ; some proof 
of a sincere and ardent desire to promote every 
thing which may enlarge the understandings and 
improve the hearts of men. And when, from 
the long distance of an hundred years, they shall 
look back upon us, they shall know, at least, 
that we possessed affections, which running back- 
ward, and warming with gratitude for what our 
ancestors have done for our happiness, run for- 
ward also to our posterity, and meet them with 
cordial salutation, ere yet they have arrived on 
the shore of Being. 

Advance, then, ye future generations ! We 
would hail you, as you rise in your long succes- 
sion, to fill the places which we now fill, and to 
taste the blessings of existence, where we are 
passing, and soon shall have passed, our own hu- 
man duration. We bid you welcome to this 
pleasant land of the Fathers. We bid you wel- 
come to the healthful skies, and the verdant 
fields of New-England. We greet your acces- 
sion to the great inheritance which we have en- 
joyed. We welcome you to the blessings of 

14 



102 

good government, and religious liberty. We 
welcome you to the treasures of science, and the 
delights of learning. We welcome you to the 
transcendant sweets of domestic life, to the hap- 
piness of kindred, and parents, and children. We 
welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of 
rational existence, the immortal hope of Chris- 
tianity, and the light of everlasting Truth ! 



^pprntrlr* 



The following is a lisl of the Discourses delivered on this Jinniversary. 
Tliose marked with an asterisk hare not been printed. 



1769. First publicly noticed by the Old Colony Club. 

1770. Edward Winslow, jun. Esq. oi Plymouth, an Oration.* 

1771. (Lord's Day) the next day (23d) a public dinner. 

1772. Rev. Chandler Robbins, of Pli/riiouth, on Ps. Ixxviii. 6. 7.* 

1773. Rev. Charles Turner, Duxbury, Zeck. iv. 10. 

1774. Rev. Gad Hitchcock, Pembroke, Gen. i. 31. 

1775. Rev. Samuel Baldwin, Hanover, Heb. xi. 8. 

1776. Rev. Sylvanus Conant, Middlcborotigh, Exod. i. 12. 

1777. Rev. Samuel West, Dartmouth, Isai. Ixvi. 5 — 9. 

1778. Rev. Timothy Milliard, Barnstable.* 

1779. Rev. William Shaw, Mnrshfteld.* 

1780. Rev. Jonathan Moore, Rochester, Isai. xli. 10. 11.* 

From this time the public observance of the day was suspended, till 

1794. Rev. Chandler Robbins, D.D. Plymouth, Psal. Ixxvii. 11. 

1795. , 

1796. > Private celebration. 
1797.5 

1798. Doct. Zacheus Bartlett, Ph-movih, an Oration.* 

1799. The day was so near that r.ppointcd for the ordination of the 

Rev. Mr. Kendall, that it was not celebrated by a public dis- 
course. 
1300. John Davis, Esq. Boston, an Oration.* 

1801. Rev. John Allyn, Duxbury, Heb. xii. 2. 

1802. John Quincy Adams, Esq., Boston, an Oration. 

1803. Rev. John T. Kirkland, D.D. Boston, Prov. xvii. 6.* 

1804. (Lord's Day) Rev. James Kendall, of Plymouth, preached from 

Heb. xi. 13.* 

1805. Alden Bradford, Esq. Wiscassel, Exod. xii. 14. 

1806. Rev. Abiel Holmes, D.D. Cambridge, Romans, xi. 5. 



104 

1807. Rev. James Freeman, Boston.* 

1808. Rev. Thaddeus M. Harris, Dorchesler, Ps. xliv. 1, 2.3. 

1809. Rev. Abiel Abbott, Beverly, Deut. xxxii. 11. 12. 

1810. Private celebration. 

1811. (Loid's Day) Rev. John Eliot, D.D. Boston.* 
1812. ^ 

1813. > Private celebration. 
1814.) 

1815. Rev. James Flint, Bridgewater, Ps. xvi. 6. 

1816. (Lord's Day) Rev. Ezra Goodwin, Sandwich, Isai. ix. 22. 

1817. Rev. Horace Hollet, Boston.* 

1818. Wendell Davis, Esq. Sandwich, an Oration.* 

1819. Francis C. Gray, Esq. Boston, an Oration.* 

1820. Hon. Daniel Webster, Boston, an Oration. 






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